Publisher's Synopsis
HANDEY is a task-level robot system that requires only a geometric description of a pick-and-place task rather than the specific robot motions necessary to carry out the task. The system-building process this book describes is a step toward eliminating the programming bottleneck that is keeping robots from fulfilling their scientific and economic potential. The HANDEY system, the state-of-the-art technologies for developing it, and the problems encountered are presented, aided by numerous marginal illustrations.;The development of HANDEY is part of the authors' long-term goal of achieving systems that can manipulate a variety of objects in different environments using a wide class of robots. HANDEY has been tested on numerous pick-and-place tasks, including parts ranging from wooden cubes to electric motors; it can be used to generate commands for different types of industrial robots, can coordinate two arms working in the same workspace, and has been tested with a module that locates the position of a specific part in a jumble of other parts.;The first three chapters introduce the HANDEY system and task-level robot programming systems in general, address the problem of planning pick-and-place tasks, review areas of geometric modelling and kinematics required for subsequent chapters, and introduce the concept of configuration space, which plays a prominent role in HANDEY. The next four chapters describe how HANDEY operates.
